Sweep targets Stockton gun violence

Sunday

Jul 13, 2014 at 12:01 AM

STOCKTON - One man who was targeted by authorities Friday during a gang enforcement mission in Stockton became agitated the moment he opened his door to find 18 officers and a fleet of law enforcement vehicles outside his apartment building.

Jason Anderson

STOCKTON - One man who was targeted by authorities Friday during a gang enforcement mission in Stockton became agitated the moment he opened his door to find 18 officers and a fleet of law enforcement vehicles outside his apartment building.

John Kelly, 24, greeted officers with an argumentative tone, glaring, scowling and cursing at them as they put his hands behind his back and placed cuffs around his wrists. When officers finished a thorough search of the cluttered Pixie Drive apartment Kelly shares with his mother and siblings, authorities arrested him on suspicion of unlawful possession of ammunition, a felony offense, police said.

"We found some bullets and he is prohibited from owning ammunition, so he'll go to jail," Sgt. Kathryn Nance of the Stockton Police Department said.

Kelly was one of dozens of criminals who were contacted during the two-day multiagency mission as part of Operation Ceasefire, an intervention program that encourages violent criminals to change their ways or face the consequences.

"This sweep is one of our Ceasefire enforcement operations, and it is really one of our continuing strategic missions to deal with gangs and guns," Stockton Police Chief Eric Jones said. "As you know with Ceasefire, we're very strategic and data driven in our approach, and we ask groups that have a propensity for violence to cease the violence. This is an example of an enforcement operation where we are, in fact, addressing and strategically going after some of our more violent groups."

Jones said these multiagency missions involve weeks of preparation and data analysis. Participating agencies included the Stockton, Lodi and Manteca police departments, the San Joaquin County Sheriff's Office, county probation officials, the Community Corrections Partnership Task Force, the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force, the Federal Bureau of Investigations and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Teams fanned throughout Stockton on Friday and Saturday to serve arrest warrants, conduct probation and parole searches, and patrol hot spots for gang activity, said Officer Joe Silva, a spokesman for the Police Department.

On Friday, officers made four felony arrests, seven felony warrant arrests, one misdemeanor warrant arrest and issued five traffic citations while making 14 parole searches and 33 probation searches, Silva said. One handgun was confiscated.

At many locations, neighbors came out of their homes to observe the heavy police activity on their streets.

"The presence of the police and the knowledge that we are out enforcing probation violations is very effective in deterring people from committing violations of their probation," Nance said. "We like to go to houses where people are doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing because that means they are not out committing other crimes."

As the mission got under way Friday, Jones said his department remains focused on fighting violent crime.

"Not everybody that we're going after has committed recent acts of violence, but everybody that we are addressing has had some kind of firearm violation in recent history, and we have cause to go give them some special attention over the next couple of days," he said. "This group has had a propensity to use firearms, and so definitely that's our No. 1 priority - firearm violence in the city of Stockton - and this is a way for us to do an enforcement operation that specifically deals with that."

Contact reporter Jason Anderson at (209) 546-8279 or janderson@recordnet.com. Follow him at recordnet.com/crimeblog and on Twitter @stockton911.